1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method to provide a software package and a provider station and a user station realizing the method and a basis software package used in the method.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Such a software packet is for instance a software package as described in the product description 'NM Expert:Integrated and Intelligent Solutions for Network, Systems and Service Management, Alcatel 1303, NM-Expert Product Description P-M-E-75005' from Alcatel Bell, Belgium and published in 1995. Therein, a modern network management system is described. This network management system is a software package for building integrated and Intelligent Network Management Systems for most demanding networking requirements and for most stringent customer specifications. The software package is delivered to customers having different kinds of hardware platforms e.g. RISC machines of SUN Microsystems, Hewlett Packard machines or IBM machines and different kinds of software platforms e.g. SUN Operating System, Solaris, and Hewlett Packard--UX.
A well known way to provide such kind of software package as described above from a provider to a user is for instance delivery on e.g. a tape of a compiled software package to a user station of the user. An advantage of such a method to provide a software package for installation in a user station is that the contents of the software package are not revealed to the user since a compiled version of a software package is not a human readable version.
However compiling of such a software package has to be done in the same environment as the user's environment. Indeed, a user which is using a particular hardware and software platform is using a particular compiler. In order to deliver a compiled software package, the precise user's environment has to be reconstructed at the provider's side whereby the compiled software package is generated in the same environment as the environment wherein the software package is used. Since not all users are working with the same hardware and software platform, reconstructing an environment implicates knowing for each user e.g. the hardware platform, the operating system, the kind of compiler and the compiler version, the version of the delivered software package and the delivery of prior patches of the software package.